"A minister asks a question which I may summarize
thus: How can one who has accepted the newer thinkingin theology so present it as to satisfy the desires of thosewho are longing for the old religion? It is a question
which a great many ministers and some laymen are asking.
The answer involves a consideration of the use and
value of sermons and church services.

* * *

"One reason why many naturally devout persons have
discontinued church attendance is because the church service
for them no longer promotes the religious life.
It
seems to them unreal.
They still wish to do justly, to
love mercy, and to walk reverently, but the church service
does not help them to do so.
They have abandoned the
Church, but they have not abandoned religion.
To bring
them back to the Church the Church must somehow put
new life into its services.
It must make its expression of
the religious feeling more effective in promoting the religious
life.

* * *

"When astronomy compelled a new theory of the Universe,and modern biology and anthropology a new theoryof the origin of man and of sin, and modern criticism anew theory of the Bible, and modern sociology a new theoryof redemption, the Puritan churches began of necessity
to construct a new theology.
The ministers who were
familiar with modern discovery and the modern mind began
to teach a new philosophy of religion.

* * *

"We no longer express penitence, thanksgiving, and
consecration by offering sacrifices.
But penitence and
thanksgiving and consecration are essentially the same experiences
that they were in the days of Ezra.Theologyhas changed.
We no longer believe that man was createdperfect six thousand years ago, and that sin came intothe world as the result of the fact that a woman was persuadedby a serpent to eat a forbidden fruit. But doing
justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God are
essentially what they were in the days of Abraham.

"In our time there are a number of self-sacrificing and
devoted philanthropists and teachers who have discarded
both worship and theology and are endeavoring to promote
the higher life by ethical instruction, illustrated and
enforced by moral example.
But while they endeavor to
promote doing justly and loving mercy, they make no effort
to promote reverent comradeship with God.
They
substitute the religion of humanity for the humanity of
religion.
Some of them are preaching ethical sermons in
Christian pulpits.
Some of them have come out from the
Church altogether and are devoting themselves to various
forms of social service.
They are doing unselfish work
for their fellow-men, and in the lives of many of them
Christian ministers might well find both example and
inspiration.

"The minister who would satisfy the need of his people
must realize that their need is not a form of worship
nor a philosophy of religion, but a life.
If he uses a
prayer-book, it must serve him as an expression of his
own penitence, thanksgiving, consecration.
If he does
not use a prayer-book, his prayers must be real communion
with God, not an address to his congregation.Whetherhe believes that man has been six or sixty thousand yearsupon the earth, that sin is the consequence of a fall fromperfection six thousand years ago or the consequence ofthe animalism in us from which we have not yet fullyemerged, that Jesus Christ saves us by having paid oncefor all the penalty of our sins in a sacrifice suffered longago or by living with us and giving life to us in a perpetualsacrifice, is not unimportant. BUT IT IS INSIGNIFICANT
BESIDE THE QUESTION WHETHER PENITENCE FOR HIS
OWN SINS AND JOY IN HIS LIVING SAVIOR ARE REAL EXPERIENCES
OR ONLY BOOK-LEARNED THEORIES.
If they are real
experiences and he can communicate them to his hearers,
he will satisfy their real needs.
If he communicates them
through the old theology, some of his hearers will think
him old-fashioned in his thinking; if he communicates
them through the new theology, some of his hearers will
fear he is not quite sound.
But if he succeeds in giving
to them that life the fruit of which is doing justly, loving
mercy, and walking humbly with God, they will accept
the gift with thankfulness, whatever may be the philosophy which he employs in imparting the gift."LymanAbbott.

COMMENTS ON DR. ABBOTT'S OUTLOOK

We have wondered how such noble men of good thinking
capacity as Doctor Abbott regard the future and their
own change of religious sentiment.
We have above, Doctor
Abbott's own words on the subject.
His expression
probably represents fairly, generously, the sentiments of
the large class of scholarly men among whom he is a
leader.
They have abandoned the old landmarks altogether.
The personal God who takes personal interest in
the affairs of man is unknown to this class.
Some of
them recognize a force operating in nature, and give this
blind force the name of godNature god.
Others, admitting
that they have no real ground for their contention,
hold that there is a personal God who is so great that He [R5468 : page 164] takes no more account of man and his interests than men
take account of ants, insects, microbes.

Yet still there is in the human heart a yearning for the
sympathy of a Divine Friend, which causes some of these
bewildered leaders of human thought to ignore their own
theories and to crave and worship a personal God of Love
whom they know not, and who has made, they think, no
revelation of Himself or of His plans, respecting which
they make liberal guesses, frequently altered, mended,
amended, contradicted.
St. Paul seemed to have some
such philosophers in mind when he wrote, "without God,
and having no hope in the world."
Jesus seems to have
had some such persons in mind when He spoke of "blind
leaders of the blind" falling into the ditch.

A DEPLORABLE CONDITION OF UNBELIEF

With many of these good people the trouble begins
with their loss of confidence in the Bible as the inspired
Revelation of God for the instruction and guidance of
His people.
As soon as any assume this attitude toward
the Bible, they are like the mariner on the high seas who
has lost his charts and compass and has become befogged.
Occasionally a little rift in the fog gives him a view of
some bright star; and for a moment he rejoices in the
thought that he at least knows by the stars which way
to steer his craft.
But as the fogs shift, he is pitiably
bewildered.
He dare not even confess to the trusting
passengers under his care the real status of affairs.
He
must be brave; he must secrete his fears and doubts and
ignorance.

This appears to be the deplorable condition of the
Higher Critics and Evolutionists.
If we misjudge them,
we shall be glad to have them set us straight.
We shall
be glad to be informed by what process of reasoning they
have any knowledge whatever respecting a future life of
any kind in any place.
We shall be glad to be informed
respecting any process of reasoning along the lines of
their presentation that would go to demonstrate that they
have, or could have, any expectation of a future life, except
representatively through their children, who in some
future time, thousands of years ahead, might be evolved
to such perfection of mind and body and to such a mastery
of conditions of nature as would permit them successfully
to combat germs, microbes and hereditary weaknesses,
and to live forever.

But how poor a prospect is this in comparison with the
hope set before us in the Gospelthe hope of a personal
future life by resurrection from the dead, a hope which
Evolutionists and Higher Critics deride as chimerical!
We can only return the compliment by declaring that the
Christian's hope, founded upon the Bible, "the hope of the
resurrection of the dead," seems to us far less chimerical,
far less unreasonable, and much more advantageous to us
in every way, than the hope of the Higher Critic and
Evolutionist that though they perish, some of their great,
great grandchildren may achieve everlasting life.

While we have no sympathy with Higher Criticism and
Evolution, we have every sympathy for the many noble
minds that have accepted these theories, to the destruction
of their own joy, peace, and faith.
Our experience gives
us this sympathy.
Once we had very much their position.
We thank God for our deliverance from it into the brighter
light from Heaven which shines in the face of Jesus
Christ our Lord, shines through His words, shines through
the writings and prophecies of the past, as explained by
the appointed and especially inspired Apostles of Jesus.
Quite probably the majority of those whose views we are
criticising came to their present views as did the writer.

A GREAT LESSON TO BE LEARNED

For three centuries the darkness of superstition has
been gradually breaking; and although the Bible has come
back to the people, it has been interpreted through creedal
spectacles of various hues, but all of them dark.
We have
been unwittingly trusting the creeds and not the Bible.
But more and more the absurdities of those creeds have
become manifest in the advancing light of the Millennial
Morning.
We have now come to the place where practically
no intelligent people any longer believe the creeds
of the past.
But in repudiating those creeds, all have
been in danger through the error of the supposition that
those creeds represent the Bible teachings.
Hence, to
nearly all of us, the repudiation of the creeds has meant
the repudiation of the Bible, however much we have desired
to hold to the Bible as the Divine Light in a dark place.

The great lesson for us all now to learn is that while
we have been right in repudiating the creeds, and while
every one of them should be publicly as well as privately
repudiated, we should return to the Bible and give it a
fresh examination, totally untrammeled by the theories of
the darker past.
We should go to the Bible, expecting to
find it in opposition to these creedsexpecting to find that
the pure Message of Divine Truth, as given out by Jesus
and His authorized Apostles, was corrupted during the
Dark Agesduring the time when the Bible was ignored
in favor of creeds formulated by bishops who mistakenly
thought themselves Apostolic bishops, and who under
Satan's misguidance led Christendom into atrocious errors and "doctrines of devils."1 Timothy 4:1.

Only by such radical change of attitude toward the
Bibleonly by such confidence in God, confidence in the
Bible as the Revelation to man of a God of all Grace, the
Father of Mercies, are we prepared to view the Old Book
from the proper angle, to see its real meaning, and to be
convinced that it is the Message of Hope for the world,
and of glory, honor and immortality for the Church, and
indeed true and worthy of all acceptation.

A NEW STIMULUS TO BIBLE STUDY

One of the chief aims of the PHOTO-DRAMA OF CREATION
is to re-establish faith in the Bible as the inspired
Word of God.
It is our conviction that many of God's
consecrated people are trembling on the brink of infidelity.
The teachings of Higher Criticism and Evolution, which
have gone forth from the colleges and intellectual leaders
of Christendom for the past forty years, have permeated,
leavened, the thought, the sentiment of the whole world.

God's consecrated people need the helping hand which
He through this DRAMA is, we believe, extending to
them.
It is wonderful to note how some of these are
being reached by it, and how quickly some of them respond.
A young man who witnessed the DRAMA in the
New York Temple (W. 63d St., near Broadway), inquired
whether or not there was something more that he
could read along the lines pursued in the DRAMA.
He
was told of the six volumes of THE STUDIES IN THE SCRIPTURES.
He purchased them at once and read them.
Returning,
he said, "I had $700 saved up to put me through
a theological course.
I have concluded that in these volumes
I have the theological course that I need."

Church attendance in Protestant Germany is shrinking
in what The Christian World's Berlin correspondent,
quoted in The Christian Work (New York), calls an
alarming way.
According to a census made on a recent
Sunday only 11,252 persons were attending the 68 State
Protestant places of worship in Berlin.
In the town of
Chemnitz, in Saxony, with 300,000 Protestants, "the
church attendance on this particular Sunday was 2,248."
Or, taking the communion statistics as a test, "in Berlin,
last year, only 14.81 per cent. of the Protestant population
partook of the communion."

Of course, says our informant, the numbers are more
satisfactory in country districts, but "in the towns, and
in numerous country districts as well, not only is the number
of communicants sinking, but it is rapidly sinking, and
has been rapidly sinking for several years past."
And
we read on:

"In Berlin it is an established fact that the number of
those who make a practise of going to church is rapidly
decreasing.
A serious journal here has been investigating
the causes for this, and as a result of its inquiries among
the working classes, it has obtained the following six
reasons for the falling off:

"(1) The influence of the anti-religious press.

"(2) Social Democratic agitation against Church.

"(3) The influence of evil-disposed neighbors and
fellow-workmen on those who would otherwise attend.

"(4) The notorious unbelief of the educated classes.

"(5) The widely spread suspicion and dislike expended
on the clergy, especially the belief that they do
not themselves believe what they teach, and that their
piety and truth are merely hypocrisy.

"(6) Finally, the fact that all public places of amusement
are open on Sunday, and that it is exactly on Sunday
that the proprietors of these places use the greatest
efforts to fill them.
Another reason given for the increasing
absence of young people from Divine service is
the recent institution of associations such as scouts, wanderers,
and boys' and girls' brigades, all of which have
their gatherings on Sundays.
The great horse-races are
held on Sunday, also the chief athletic events.
It is stated
that all these things help to deplete the churches.

"Another journal in examining the causes at work in
emptying the churches does not hesitate to remark that
the antiquated methods employed by the clergy in addressing
their flocks and in conducting their services are
becoming 'repulsive' to churchgoers.
Modern men in
modern life will not tolerate a man in a pulpit calling
them 'beloved hearers.' They hate the sanctimony and
unctuousness inseparable from so many pastors.
It irritates
them to hear, 'firstly, my beloved,' and 'secondly,
my dear brethren,' and 'thirdly and lastly.'

"Then there is a strong impression that much might
be done to modernize the service of song.
The Germans
are the most musical people in the world and possess some
of the most magnificent church music ever written.
But
they are beginning to lose all patience with those slowly
droned-forth chorales in which there is neither force nor
fire.
With a sigh they think of the bright services of song in English and American churches."Literary Digest.